Today we finally received complete confirmation of our summer position at Custer State Park in South Dakota's Black Hills. We've been hired as seasonal state employees working as Gate Attendants (we'll be the smiling ones taking your money and telling you where the buffalo are roaming . . . .), rotating through all of the park's five entrances. We plan on arriving on May 10 -- we'll be staying at Wheels West RV Park, just outside the west entrance to the park near Custer. The state uses a combination of paid workers (like us) and volunteers -- and the volunteers get most of the the available worker campsites inside the park -- a bit of a change from the normal workamping scenario that we've gotten used to over the past summers.
The park management did find a site for us, but it was way off in one corner of the park (which is huge -- 72,000 acres) -- so we decided to stay closer in at the commercial park near Custer. All in all, the overall employment package was attractive enough, even with this additional expense, to keep us interested. Our orientation will start on May 11, and our commitment/contract is through late September.
We're really looking forward to enjoying the summer there -- neither of us has been there before, but we've heard so many good things about the area, we can't wait to get started.
In preparation for hitting the road in a couple of weeks, we finally had our appointment today with the Cummins facility here in Yuma (Yuma Diesel Service) to get several engine recalls/service advisories taken care of. We got two out of three taken care of, but parts had to be ordered for the third one, and we'll have to take the coach back in to them in a week. Everything else is coming together as we check out all the coach systems to make sure everything is ready to go.
As we head east, we'll make a quick detour to Flagstaff then take a couple of days to get to the Austin area, where we'll stay with our sons and their families for a week or so. Our stay there will coincide with the birth (scheduled for May 4) of granddaughter Gillian, and after we give our love to our whole family there, we'll head north to South Dakota. We plan on spending more time there this fall on our way back to Yuma.
We've decided to leave the tandem here in our storage in Yuma for the summer and just take the road bikes and mountain bikes with us. We're not in a tandem-ing phase at this time, and it will make packing the car much easier to only have to make arrangements for four bikes. I've also done some housecleaning in the motorhome basement over the past week, and Mandy has gone through her kitchen cupboards, and we've both found a number of things we really don't need to drag with us all over the country. Its taken us 18 months to get really where we need to be in effectively using the storage in our Phaeton -- balancing usefulness and necessity with weight, placement, and available storage area.
We also got our last Algodones, Mexico run done over the past several days -- getting our teeth cleaned, and stocking up on drugs and prescriptions. Its really great to be able to wait until the crowds die down -- both days we had virtually no wait crossing back into the US, whereas several weeks ago we would have stood in line for and hour or more. That's about it for now -- no pictures this time around. We'll snap some for our next posting as we should have some good ones from tomorrow night's bike club potluck out near Gila Mountain -- the full moon and excellent weather forecast (at least for now) should make for an enjoyable evening.
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